“Mustange cor de sangue” is another solid effort from the Brothers Valle, much more in a pop vein than “A viola enluarda” from the previous year. From the start you can hear a strong influence of the `pilantragem` of Wilson Simonal, who would in fact rerecord the title track this same year. This song and “Os dentes brancos do mundo” are cited by Marcos as being critiques against consumerism and social inequality, while Samba de Verão No.2 is a comment about the changed turbulent times that left with people neither “the calm or the piece necessary to appreciate ‘Samba de verão’ from his second album. (Reading between the lines, it’s as if he is saying that song has outlived its relevance by 1969… Unfortunately Samba de Verão No.2 is also nowhere near as memorable a tune as its namesake, but holds its own.)

The jazzy slightly funk-inflected Azymuth would be the inspiration for the name of that band, who would eventually come to work with Marcos a few years later. The songs “O Evangelho segundo San Quentin” is one of the more beguiling, rather abstract piece of avant-pop, followed by another gorgeous collaboration with Milton Nascimento, “Diálogo”, which ends the original album. (This would be the last time Milton would appear on a Marcos Valle album as far as I am aware, which is odd since Marcos would soon record with Som Imaginario and continue to collaborate with people associated with Milton. My celebrity-gossip guess, based on nothing, is that Milton had an unrequitted love crush on blond-haired blue-eyed Marcos and hence had to stop appearing on his albums). The whole album leaves my tongue twittering to utter the phrase “transitional” album as its flirtations with psychedelia, rock, and an alchemical stew of bossa, samba, pop, and jazz idioms make this album into more of an introduction to his 1970s work than a closing chapter on his 1960s` “canon”.

The bonus tracks here are particularly cool. The alternate instrumental take of “Tigre de Esso, que sucesso” is quite funkier, leaving it to our imagination what it would have sounded like if it was chosen as the album take. “Feio aerodinamico” would appear on Marcus’s next album, and here we get a very different instrumental version. The last song, “Beijos sideral” is likewise a piece of grandoise quase-psychedelic pop.

The usual suspects appearing in the lineup, with Victor Manga on drums this time and Nanâ Vasconcelos on percussion, oddly enough.

I found a cool review of this album in Portuguese that does a better job of describing the album and its context, including some interpretations of Paulo’s surreal lyrics on some of the tunes. Pity I have no time for a translation right now, so those who are interested can check it out via Google translator. Its written by Leonardo Bonfim at an online magazine called “Freakium!”